The use of mobile devices such as tablet computers, smart phones, mobile phones, handheld devices, and other devices that provide communication between a mobile device and resources over the Internet, has become commonplace. In the traditional PC environment, a web-browser provides most of the access for a user of the PC to resources on the Internet, potentially with the exception of an e-mail application, such as Outlook® by Microsoft®. Therefore, when it is desired to gather information about a user, the activity of the user can typically be found concentrated in the web-browser, e.g., Explorer®, FireFox®, Mozilla®, Safari®, Chrome™, or others. Each web-browser maintains its own profile of the user, for example by having cookies installed on the browser, and assuming that a typical user uses only a single browser, such information collection typically provides good information about the user.
The challenge begins when entering the world of mobile communications. The mobile devices are characterized by having a plurality of mobile applications, also referred to as “apps”, each app having independent communication over the Internet for the user of the mobile device. Therefore, there may be a browser, an e-mail program, Facebook®, Skype®, and the like, each communicating independently for the user of the mobile device. In many cases, each such app is a “mini-browser” of its own that enables communication with a resource on the Internet. As such, a mobile application typically collects proprietary information about the user which is not shared with others. Thus, the user will have separate and unique user identification (UID) for each app used on the device.
It is therefore difficult to provide a coherent view of the user, let alone provide the user with data that is based on a user's profile collected from other apps. Hence, access from, for example, two different apps to the very same Internet resource by the user of the same mobile device would result in two different detached profiles for the same user of the same mobile device on that Internet resource, as two different UIDs are utilized.
It would be therefore advantageous to provide a solution that overcomes the limitations of currently available applications (apps) for mobile devices. It would be further advantageous if such a solution would not require changes to mobile applications that are downloaded to the mobile device.